


Untitled

by genarti



Series: old drabbles and ficlets [11]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-21
Updated: 2004-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:36:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy thinks of Caspian, and of things that will and won't be.  Set in the middle of The Dawn Treader.  Written in December 2004.  Short fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

Lucy watches Caspian, sometimes, as he strides across the Dawn Treader's rolling deck, or leans with Drinian over the charts they make of these uncharted waters, or practices his swordwork alone or with Edmund in his cabin that is now hers. She watches him, and sometimes when he laughs or when the muscles of his shoulders shift under his linen shirt there is a strange tight feeling in her stomach.

She has never told anyone that she has lain awake, wondering what it would be like to kiss Caspian. At school back in England, her friend Ginny once asked her, giggling, whom she fancied, and Lucy blushed and said "No one," and refused to talk about it any more. Now, she sleeps in his cabin while he shares one with Edmund and Eustace both, because there is an automatic chivalry in Narnian kings that she half appreciates and half takes for granted, and she has a quiet secret gladness because the cabin smells like him, the blankets and pillow and air.

Lucy is a queen. This is something she simply knows, without bragging or modesty, here in Narnia. She is a girl a little younger than Caspian, brown-haired, good at archery and Literature and bad at Arithmatic, and a queen.

She is not a star's daughter.

Caspian calls her "lady" and "friend" and "cousin," for as queen and king they are a sort of kin, and she sees friendship and respect in his eyes when he looks at her. But there is not the dazed wondering light there was when he gazed at Ramandu the star's daughter, and now she knows that there never will be. Because she is only Lucy, short and pigtailed and not a beauty.

She only lets herself watch him for a little while, usually, not long enough to look strange, and then she pulls herself away to go do something useful, help the sailors or keep Reepicheep company or explain something to Eustace. Because queens do not brood, or wish away a star-daughter's happiness, and she is quite sure Aslan would not want her to.

But her heart still turns over sometimes, when Caspian turns his face to the wind and laughs, with his hair blowing back and his eyes shining.


End file.
